Global Family Doctor

WONCA is an unusual, yet convenient acronym comprising the first five initials of the World Organization of National Colleges, Academies and Academic Associations of General Practitioners/Family Physicians.

Professor Barbara Starfield championed the value and need of strong primary health care systems worldwide. This collection emphasizes the case for primary care and includes a number of Barbara Starfield's own articles as well as other key related material.

Working Party News

Information on high quality, freely accessible online resources, with a focus on common mental health problems, aimed primarily (but not exclusively) at family doctors. This list has been collated by members of the WONCA Working Party on Mental Health

Dr John Wynn-Jones, Chair of RuralWONCA (WONCA Working Party on Rural Practice) summarises the annual report of the Working Party: It has been particularly busy year with two conferences within six months; at the World WONCA Conference in Rio de Janeiro (November 2016) and at our own 14th WONCA World Rural Health Conference in Cairns Australia (April 2017). Both were highly successful and it was valuable for our council to meet on both occasions.

This paper explores ways peer group supervision in a long term well established group of general practitioners can improve communication and patient centred care at the same time maintaining enthusiasm and preventing burn out. In Denmark group supervision for general practitioners is an established part of continuing professional development.

The WONCA Rural Africa group (WoRA) was introduced at the 14th WONCA Rural Assembly in Cairns Australia and was unanimously accepted. WoRA will be launched on the 18 August 2017 during the 5th WONCA Africa region conference in Pretoria and in India during 15th Rural WONCA conference 2018.

The government of Ukraine, together with the WHO-office in Kiev, is engaged in a process of transformation of the health care system, strengthening primary care and family medicine. Dr. Kees van Boven and Prof. Jan De Maeseneer gave a two-days training workshop for 50 family doctors, coming from the different Oblasts (“Provinces” in Ukraine), in Kiev.

A task group of the WONCA Working Party for Mental Health, led by Alan Cohen (UK) and Kim Griswold (USA) has developed guidance to enable family doctors to care more effectively for their patients with severe mental illness.

Two Australian medical students, Thomas Currie (6th Year Medicine, James Cook University) and William Moorhead (4th Year Medicine, University of Queensland) – ‘Tom’ and ‘Billy’ attended the WONCA World Rural health conference in Cairns in early May. They provide their perspectives on the conference.

If you missed this amazing event, now is your opportunity to see our highlights reel! Thanks to everyone who attended the 14th World Rural Health Conference. It's hard to pick a highlight - there's so many to choose from! So here's some stand out events from the four days of conferencing.